The China Syndrome: The Coming Global Financial Meltdown
All the phantom wealth piled up in China’s boost phase is now melting down, and the China Syndrome will trigger a meltdown in global phantom assets.
The 1979 film The China Syndrome took its name from the darkly humorous notion that a nuclear reactor meltdown in the U.S. would burn straight through the Earth to China. (wikipedia: The China Syndrome)
In today’s world, the financial meltdown in China has burned straight through the global financial system to the U.S. financial markets. The mainstream financial media is delighted to promote the many links between the U.S. and Chinese economies when the two economies are feeding each other’s expansion in a tightly coupled virtuous cycle.
But once China’s slowdown starts impacting the American economy, the mainstream financial media trundles out the usual pundit suspects to declare that the U.S. and Chinese economies are decoupled, so a meltdown in China will have little impact on America–and vice versa.
The rationalizations for this decoupling are many–and specious. Exports are actually only 10% of China’s economy, we’re assured, so any slowdown in China will be modest and of little relevance to the U.S. economy.
Various experts also assure us that China’s vast stash of foreign reserves and U.S. Treasuries will enable it to quickly smooth over any spot of bother in its currency (RMB/yuan) resulting from capital flight out of China.
None of these rationalizations change the fact that China is integral to the global financial markets, and so its slowdown and capital flight are toppling carry trade and other risk-off financial dominoes.
China is tightly coupled to the U.S. and global economies via capital flows and supply/demand. It’s important to understand that demand drives profits on the margins: of ten sales, the first nine sales just cover production and overhead costs; only the last sale generates substantial profits.
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